Week 3

Looking around Flickr and exploring the photos on Mosman's flickr page (you do a great job, Mosman!), I really like the way that Mosman shares its local history photos on Flickr and would like to try something similar at my library.

I will probably need to explore the potential copyright issues and write down some guidelines first, but I think the bottom-up approach at Flickr might be easier than trying to create a stand along Local History image database - and Flickr has the added benefit of being connected to a ready-made and ever growing community (some members of which probably live in this local government area and might be interested in local history photographs but never visit the library!).

On a personal note - I do like the serindipitous nature of online communities, especially Flickr.

I spent my childhood summers in a small valley on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand. The community at the mouth of this valley is called Cronadun, but it is far from a holiday destination! One summer the local policeman walked up to our holiday house (a run down ex-miners cottage in the middle of a couple of paddocks) and said hi, simply because he had been searching earlier in the year online for Cronadun (just for curiosities sake, to see what would come up) and came across my personal blog, which mentioned our holidays there and my Mum's flickr page, which had some beautiful photos of the valley. We made a new friend, because a stranger looked up something that he cared about, found some other people who cared about it too - and then realised that they lived next door - in the middle of nowhere!



I imagine that occasionally people might, just out of interest, search for things online (or on flickr) that are in our Local History collection - and if we put them out there, so that they are easy to find, maybe more people will find them (and, by extension, find us!).

Readers Advisory suggestion for today's exercise: Always Coming Home by Ursula K Le Guin, because reading this book set in a hummocky valley in Northern California, during the summer I was 15 (in my hummocky valley in New Zealand), helped me shape my landscape values.

Week 2

Last week ran away from me and I find myself not actually writing my second (and first official) blog post until now.

I'm loving the Learning 2.0 program so far, but what I am loving most is how much people I work with are talking about it, how much it is raising awareness of opportunities to integrate online interaction into what we already do. What I am learning (and what the people around me seem to be learning) is that there are implications beyond this Learning program for libraries that we are just starting to see.

I am hoping to learn through the program exactly how Web 2.0 ready my library is. I can see how we could use a lot of the tools that Web 2.0 offers to connect with library customers and our community, but what I don't actually know is how capable our set up is.

I think it will take a bit of strategic planning - a vision for the best ways that we can use this technology to connect with our particular community, and than an action plan for how we can make this happen.

Things that I think would work for our community include:

A library flickr page that promotes our library activities and programs, but that also celebrates the local community, its cultures and a sense of place.

workshops for the local community. I would love to run a flickr workshop, but would also love to team up with an organisation like ICE (Information and Cultural Exchange) to run a workshop for the young afghan community on blogging (now that Blogger lets you blog in Persian!)

A community events/cultural events blog with a library focus. The library I work for is a community hub, and I think it would be great to be able to promote all the wonderful activities and programs that other organisations run, as well as the library offerings. I think that this approach might attract a wider readership than just a straight library blog.

That's all my thoughts for now.

Readers Advisory suggestion for this week: Bellwether by Connie Willis (because it has some nice library moments and is all about trends and fads).